The Postcolonial State in Africa
, by Young, CrawfordNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780299291440 | 0299291448
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 11/20/2012
In The Postcolonial State in Africa, Crawford Young offers an informed and authoritative comparative overview of fifty years of African independence, drawing on his decades of research and first-hand experience on the African continent. Young identifies three cycles of hope and disappointment common to many of the African states (including those in North Africa) over the last half-century: initial euphoria at independence in the 1960s followed by disillusionment with a lapse into single-party autocracies and military rule; a period of renewed confidence, radicalization, and ambitious state expansion in the 1970s preceding state crisis and even failure in the disastrous 1980s; and a phase of reborn optimism during the continental wave of democratization beginning around 1990. He explores in depth the many African civil wars-especially those since 1990-and three key tracks of identity, Africanism, territorial nationalism, and ethnicity. Only more recently, Young argues, have the paths of the fifty-three African states begun to diverge more dramatically, with some leading to liberalization and others to political, social, and economic collapse-outcomes impossible to predict at the outset of independence.